On the Downbeat

There is a savage beauty in music

When a song completely consumes you 

Calls to your current or a past self 

Accuracy tearing at your soul 

Squeezing your heart 

Overwhelming you, emotion fit to bursting 

And what can you do other than experience 


Breathe through guitar riffs & voices crooning in your ear 

As your mind screams 


This thing, I couldn’t put into words 

Like calling to like 

That rising lump in your throat as it slowly saunters to an end 

Leaving you with that empty feeling

Do you press repeat? 

Do you suffer and celebrate through the experience once more? 

Like a scab you want to pick at, the refrain stuck in your head 

The tune cycling through your brain again, and again, and again 

How do they do this? 

These artists that read your inner thoughts through melodies 

Or is that your thoughts are not so wholly unique

You just needed someone else to express them for you. 

On Intimidation

He comes in a suit.
It’s clean. With a matching tie. His beard trimmed.
He tells me,
“If I attacked you, you wouldn’t look me in the eye.”

He and his friend had come into my work the week before. Drank too much. Tipped too little.
His friend said he wanted to hear us fuck.
They try to get me to leave with them. They say we’ll play guitar and sing. Maybe more.
They say I don’t have to fuck either of them. Or I could.
After all, the night is still young.

I get them out the door, and he stops, right in front of me.
Tells me
“But I just wanted a kiss,”
I ask him it back.
“Did you just want a kiss?”

He smells like whisky, with bloodshot eyes. His skin droops and sags.
“Well and then see where it goes, but you won’t fuck me. You won’t ever fuck me.”

Another coworker is waiting, trying to get inside, but he’s on top of me and I’m back against the door unable to run back inside or leave.
So I kiss his cheek and say,
“Get home safe.”
And they finally exit, let my coworker come through. Let me go back inside.

So he comes back in his suit and says
“I don’t remember what happened,”
He explains,
“My friend told me I should come back and ask you out. That you’d say yes.’
He tells me,
“The other guy, the other one that works with you, said I don’t know what you did but I basically raped you.”

He says, many times,
“But I didn’t rape you.”

He sits at the counter, with his smoothed out hair and alcohol on his breath,
“I am sorry,
But it’s all moot isn’t it,
Because you will never fuck me.”

And he doesn’t understand that what happened was intimidating. That his presence makes me nauseous.
He says
“I didn’t assault you”

“I didn’t touch you,”

“I didn’t rape you.”

Because this standard is such that If you, a well meaning man,
Come into my work
Where I make the money I need to survive
And make me feel threatened,
Trap me with no place to run
Tell me I’m only as important as my legs will spread for you
It’s okay
Because, as you said,
You didn’t fucking rape me.

Because I will still look at you.
Because I will talk to you.

So nothing really happened.

Nothing happened at all.

On Fire

They ask me, ‘What does it feel like?’

It feels like fire.

They rephrase the question.

‘What do you need?’






Control is back.
The flame simmers once again.

On Words

(Special thank you to the friend mentioned in On Dirty Minds for helping in the editing of this.) 

The alphabet will affect me far more than kisses and bites and fingers ever will.

Or is it the tongue that wraps around the letters, that forms sentences that travel through me, making my mind turn to mush, melting me into a puddle that no longer wishes to move, to think, to feel anything but that person wrapped around me.

Or is it the timing, things said as I’m already floating up in space, words that send me higher, which feel like a jolt of electricity down my spine, sending shivers straight through to my toes.

Or is it the person themselves, that have read each reaction so carefully, that have cracked through exterior walls, that understand which things will have more of an effect than their body ever could, or make me more than willing to accept what their body could offer.

There are times I crave the silence. Because some people need to stay silent so I can fly above the atmosphere, so I can be somewhere else in that moment, or get through the moment, and then come back to be present with the person beside me.

Sometimes silence is our language, growls and sighs whispered in ears, and it’s more than enough. It can be positive, negative, or neutral. In whatever case, human language is unnecessary.

But there are those that have understood the power of words, in the most intricate of manners.

That can ruin with a sentence.
Melt with a whisper.
Destroy sanity with syllables.

And I can only reply with a yes, no, or sigh. I will paint landscapes with a mouth that never utters a sound, but I will come undone under the power of words.

But only for those who know how to properly wield this power.